Speaker 1: Come on, girls, Caitlin and Brendan Foley, keep a cow
Speaker 1: for warmth, a donkey, he's kind of a watch dog,
Speaker 1: a billygoat with a punk hair do, and three dozen
Speaker 1: other goats on their farm. Hoofprint Cheese Company. Happy goats,
Speaker 1: delicious cheese, wonderful. That's the goal anyway at the Hoofprint
Speaker 1: Cheese Company and Upstate New York. As far as we
Speaker 1: can tell, the goats are happy, and we know the
Speaker 1: cheese is delicious. But farming is lots of work, little sleep,
Speaker 1: and it's generally not so lucrative. Still, it's a job
Speaker 1: like no other, and for many it's wonderfully enough. On
Speaker 1: this edition of On the Job from Express Employment Professionals,
Speaker 1: we'll meet a couple who's come back to the land
Speaker 1: to make a living doing what they love. If you
Speaker 1: want to find your next job, or if you're a
Speaker 1: company hoping to grow your work force, Express Employment Professionals
Speaker 1: is for you. Find more information at express prose dot com. Now,
Speaker 1: Karen Michelle brings us a story from New York's Hudson
Speaker 1: Valley about how a ten year old love of goats
Speaker 1: blossomed into a way of life. The Hudson Valley of
Speaker 1: New York State has a long history of farming. In
Speaker 1: Duchess County alone, less than a hundred miles north of Manhattan.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety there were at least thirty four hundred farms,
Speaker 1: but a hundred years later the number had dwindled to
Speaker 1: just over six hundred. There's hope the farm to table
Speaker 1: movement has spawned a resurgence in farming. Small farming and
Speaker 1: younger generations are choosen to stay, and newcomers are also
Speaker 1: tilling the soil, tapping the trees, and breeding livestock for
Speaker 1: meat and milk. Both thirty one years old, Brendan and
Speaker 1: Caitly and Foley are among the young folks opting to
Speaker 1: make a living, or at least most of one, milking
Speaker 1: goats and making cheese, but still takes real outside jobs
Speaker 1: to keep Hoofprint Cheese company going. Caitlin Foley has always
Speaker 1: had a thing for goats, as her mother, Diane Massarone
Speaker 1: knows well this one. At about age eight, decided she
Speaker 1: wanted to go. I guess most kids asked for a pony,
Speaker 1: but I really just wanted to go. I read about
Speaker 1: them and and learned about them, and there how much
Speaker 1: of a personality they have, and so I just really
Speaker 1: wanted to go the family mom dad, Kate and her
Speaker 1: two sisters were already raising pigs and sheep. That's in
Speaker 1: addition to her parents other jobs. He is a caretaker
Speaker 1: of the estate where they lived and kept the animals,
Speaker 1: and she had a local private school. But Kate, evidently
Speaker 1: as straightforward then as she is now, insisted a goat.
Speaker 1: Diane gave in, well, we knew nothing about goats, and
Speaker 1: we said sure, sure, sure, and we just kept pushing
Speaker 1: her off and pushing her off, and she just kept
Speaker 1: at it. I want to go, I want to go,
Speaker 1: I want to go, and she would look at pictures
Speaker 1: of goats, and so finally we decided at when she
Speaker 1: turned ten, that we would surprise her with a baby goat.
Speaker 1: So she did you come home from school? She came
Speaker 1: home from school and we told her to put her
Speaker 1: boots on. We had to go to the grocery store.
Speaker 1: And she couldn't understand why she had put boots on
Speaker 1: to go to the grocery store, but we were going
Speaker 1: to a farm where she could pick out her baby goat.
Speaker 1: And that was her surprise ten year birthday present, which
Speaker 1: meant going into the farmer's living room, where she had
Speaker 1: a playpen full of baby goats for Kate to choose from.
Speaker 1: There are a whole lot of kinds of goats, depending
Speaker 1: on the kinds of counting, but most folks are familiar
Speaker 1: with two kinds of goats, Alpine, the ones usually see
Speaker 1: in fairy tales and movie musicals, and faniel eared Nubians, who,
Speaker 1: even to this formerly non goat person, really are adorable.
Speaker 1: So she had the long floppy ears that I thought
Speaker 1: were very cute, and she had her coloration. Her pattern
Speaker 1: was really cute. She had a belt in the middle
Speaker 1: that was white and brown on the head and the rump,
Speaker 1: and uh. She was. She was the most friendly, the
Speaker 1: most outgoing. She was one that would follow me around
Speaker 1: the living room, and I just knew that that was
Speaker 1: the one that I wanted, And so we brought her home.
Speaker 1: And she was a Nubian goat. So I named her
Speaker 1: Newby and we had her for her whole life, living
Speaker 1: with us or with her family, Kate's family, who had
Speaker 1: to build a barn for nuby and learn about goats,
Speaker 1: how to milk and breed and birth and care for
Speaker 1: growing hurt and then Diane started making cheese, and well
Speaker 1: there was lots to do, which she says was no
Speaker 1: big deal. Well, my husband grew up um on a
Speaker 1: dairy farm and I grew up on at the Millbrook
Speaker 1: Hunt Club, so we were used to animals, and we
Speaker 1: both had a passion for animals, and that came through
Speaker 1: in our kids, and it was just a normal way
Speaker 1: of life for us. They clearly passed that love of
Speaker 1: caring for animals onto Kate. She even worked at her
Speaker 1: high school zoo. Yes there was a zoo. She went
Speaker 1: away to college to study biology, and during her first year,
Speaker 1: on a visit home, she started dating a young guy
Speaker 1: who had worked on their farm, Brendan Foley. That was
Speaker 1: about ten years ago. I was thrilled. I loved Brendan
Speaker 1: right from the start and he was always part of
Speaker 1: the family anyway, so it was great. Time passed. Caitlin
Speaker 1: graduated and started working in zoos, Brendan finished his degree
Speaker 1: in applied mathematics. We picked up and we moved to
Speaker 1: New York City. UM Kate had gotten a job at
Speaker 1: the Prospect part Zoo in Brooklyn, and I was I
Speaker 1: was in the process of getting a job in Manhattan,
Speaker 1: um at a natural all consulting firm. So we lived
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn for for five years, four and a half
Speaker 1: years or so. By then they'd had enough of city life,
Speaker 1: just as the Hudson Valley had lured artists to its
Speaker 1: light and landscapes. That's how it was for the young couple.
Speaker 1: We we got to the point where we we decided
Speaker 1: that we didn't want to do what we're doing for
Speaker 1: the rest of our lives. Um. And we're young enough
Speaker 1: to be able to make a change, and we don't
Speaker 1: have kids, um. And we still weren't married at this point,
Speaker 1: but we had been together for quite a number of years,
Speaker 1: and you know, so we don't have those types of
Speaker 1: obligations and people that are relying on us in that sense, um,
Speaker 1: that we can make a change. UM. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: very long afterwards we decided that that, you know, what
Speaker 1: if we started a farm, and what if we if
Speaker 1: we did something, you know, along the lines of what
Speaker 1: Diane was doing with goat cheese and goats and goat milk.
Speaker 1: Because Kate knows goats. Um. You know, I like goats.
Speaker 1: I took care of them, but I'm not a n
Speaker 1: spurt in by any means, Kate really is. That's that
Speaker 1: is her domain. How it was pretty scary. We both
Speaker 1: had pretty good jobs that we were doing to find
Speaker 1: out in the city, and UM, to leave that and
Speaker 1: make that change, it was a little bit scary, but
Speaker 1: we knew it was what we wanted, so that's what
Speaker 1: we did. Well, this is only a little over two
Speaker 1: years ago that we made this decision, UM, and we
Speaker 1: had nothing. You know, we didn't have any goats, we
Speaker 1: had no machinery, we had no equipment we had we
Speaker 1: didn't have a place to do it. Um. So we
Speaker 1: spent the next several months UM trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to do this and how to start and how
Speaker 1: to make this transition. The first thing we did was
Speaker 1: we moved back up here and we started acquiring animals.
Speaker 1: But at first they had trouble finding goats a goat,
Speaker 1: and so Caitlin's parents called the farmer where she'd gotten
Speaker 1: newbi She did have this one little dough that she
Speaker 1: had really liked and she had kept, and she said
Speaker 1: that she would be willing to sell her to us.
Speaker 1: And so my parents called me up and said, we
Speaker 1: found your first goat. Let's go back and you know
Speaker 1: we're going to go get her, and it was sort
Speaker 1: of reminiscent of when I was ten years old and
Speaker 1: we did the same thing. But we went there and
Speaker 1: they had this very cute little dough named Velvet, and
Speaker 1: we picked her up and brought her home and she
Speaker 1: started a hoofprint off a Hi girls, Come on, over,
Speaker 1: Come on girls. The logo is a goat's hoof. No
Speaker 1: surprise there, and there's a money girls, Happy Goats, Delicious Cheese,
Speaker 1: Wonderful Life. It kind of goes along with our goals
Speaker 1: for the company. We had talked about not being organic.
Speaker 1: Um that is enough any particular interest to us, but
Speaker 1: we do want to provide a good of a living
Speaker 1: environment for the goats. We want to make sure that
Speaker 1: they're healthy and what they're doing because we think that
Speaker 1: that passes through in the milk um and we think
Speaker 1: it's the most humane thing to do. UM. So the
Speaker 1: Happy Goats is right in line with what we're trying
Speaker 1: to do. Delicious Cheese, we hope is what emanates from
Speaker 1: that from Happy Goats, And the last line wonderful Life
Speaker 1: is we hope, we hope, we hope that this is
Speaker 1: the rest of our life. And but this is what
Speaker 1: we really want to do. UM. This isn't about making
Speaker 1: the most money you can make in life. This is
Speaker 1: about rather doing something that you want to do, that
Speaker 1: you like doing, that you feel good about doing. UM.
Speaker 1: So providing a living that you can live off of
Speaker 1: UM sustainably and at the same time provide great food
Speaker 1: for the community. We're going to take a short break
Speaker 1: and when we come back well, Brendan sounds calm talking
Speaker 1: about that good life. Getting there is a bit of
Speaker 1: a stretch. They like. Many of the new general ration
Speaker 1: of young farmers also work off the farm as well.
Speaker 1: Hear what a group of them get together for a meal.
Speaker 1: You're listening to independent producer Karen Michelle with a story
Speaker 1: we call forget the big city. It's the country life
Speaker 1: for me. On the Job is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Express Employment Professionals. One company is on a mission to
Speaker 1: put a million people to work each year. Sounds like
Speaker 1: a big number, doesn't it not to Express Employment Professionals
Speaker 1: seeking a skilled labor position or administrative order. Maybe you're
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Speaker 1: million people to work each year. Let us help. We'll
Speaker 1: open geors for you. Go to express pros dot com
Speaker 1: to find a location near you. Now back to Karen
Speaker 1: Michelle and the Young Farmers of the Hudson Valley of
Speaker 1: New York State. Sue Cup Farms is the site of
Speaker 1: this month's gathering of a group of the Young Farmers. UM.
Speaker 1: So we're okay, let's see get right, Harlem Valley Farm
Speaker 1: and Food Alliance. Right, okay, this is I guess we're
Speaker 1: already a year old. Right. UM. We had our first
Speaker 1: event in September. It was our first farm Day. UM.
Speaker 1: People went around and toured each of our farms, UM
Speaker 1: in a single day. Jennifer Sukoop is one of ten
Speaker 1: members of the group, all seated around an impromptu table
Speaker 1: in the Maple Farm shop and production space eating dishes
Speaker 1: sourced from their farms. Pig was the main dish and
Speaker 1: flavored with suk coops maple syrup. Jennifer had gone to
Speaker 1: college to become a chef Hoofprint Cheese Is Kate and
Speaker 1: Brendan Foley were among the eager eaters. One of the things,
Speaker 1: one of the things that you probably noticed just going
Speaker 1: around the room. We're all in our thirties and uh
Speaker 1: in thirties and essentially forty caps us out. So I
Speaker 1: feel like we're we're really the next generation of farming
Speaker 1: in this area, and we're all trying to band together
Speaker 1: in order to to provide some support for one another,
Speaker 1: and really are all of our goals here. We all
Speaker 1: want to have um farm to table production, so direct
Speaker 1: sales to consumers, so all of us have there's something
Speaker 1: less tangible that appeals to the group. To my name
Speaker 1: is Josh if your tell? And UM, I feel like
Speaker 1: one of the really special things about this group having
Speaker 1: to come together and create some of the connections that
Speaker 1: I think our grandparents probably already had. So when we
Speaker 1: need a bunch of round bales of hay because we're
Speaker 1: running short for cattle, our advice about what style of
Speaker 1: trailer to get, or an issue with someone in town hall,
Speaker 1: you know, when you when you lose rural communities and
Speaker 1: you lose farms, Um, you're not just losing those farm businesses,
Speaker 1: You're losing a sort of way of life where you
Speaker 1: think to lean on each other. And that's a really
Speaker 1: important thing and I think for us a thing that
Speaker 1: UM called this group and creation was maybe trying to
Speaker 1: create that or in some way formalize it, make sure
Speaker 1: that we have that in a time and a place
Speaker 1: where that doesn't necessarily always exists. But things have changed.
Speaker 1: Where there were once hundreds of dairy farms in Duchess County,
Speaker 1: now there are about a dozen. In the past, dairy
Speaker 1: farms sold their milk to bigger companies who do the
Speaker 1: processing and selling, quite a different business model. Some farms
Speaker 1: changed completely, Jennifer, My father in law used to have
Speaker 1: as a just a dairy farm, and then he had
Speaker 1: some beef cattle, and you never sold any of that directly.
Speaker 1: He made naple syrup, but it was only he, you know,
Speaker 1: gave some to his family and friends. So when I
Speaker 1: took over, I really started UM shifting it from UM
Speaker 1: just that wholesale to retail. And it's been really slow.
Speaker 1: I mean it's been five years, but it seems like
Speaker 1: it's so slow changing UM. And then even like with
Speaker 1: the pumpkins and the fall and South have gone from
Speaker 1: just putting it on a cart outside to pick your
Speaker 1: own in the pumpkin patch too then turn into well
Speaker 1: we'll take a hey right up there, which is now
Speaker 1: turned into our whole fall. Some of these young farmers,
Speaker 1: like Jennifer and her husband, took over the family farm.
Speaker 1: Others started their own. Most of them went off to
Speaker 1: college to become something else, a physical therapist, a biologist
Speaker 1: and mathematician, a chef, deesel, mechanic designer. But they were
Speaker 1: called back to farming. Not that most of them can
Speaker 1: make a go of it without at least someone in
Speaker 1: the family keeping an outside job. Andrew Richards father in law,
Speaker 1: had an apple orchard. He wanted to start a distillery
Speaker 1: and asked urbanite Andrew if he wanted to do it.
Speaker 1: He said sure, he could read books to figure out how,
Speaker 1: but it took his wife to make it possible. Without
Speaker 1: her job, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: health care the whole thing. I do. Take care of
Speaker 1: our son. I'll take at it for that. There were
Speaker 1: lots of nods around the table. Most of these farmers
Speaker 1: and distillers have kids. Brendan and Kate Foley are the exception.
Speaker 1: I think that the Goat kids are going to be
Speaker 1: our kids. They both have outside jobs. Kate works for
Speaker 1: a farm animal vet nearby, so I'm there Monday through Thursday. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm usually they're at seven fifteen and I leave there
Speaker 1: about four thirty. UM. And of course you know, choices
Speaker 1: are done on the farm before and after that. Kate's
Speaker 1: job is technically part time, so no benefits. That's where
Speaker 1: Brendan's job is. Key Tom, it's Brendan. How are you.
Speaker 1: Brendan works for a pension and health actuarial consulting firm.
Speaker 1: Much of his work involves being on the phone with
Speaker 1: his clime. So, so I guess you know. The first
Speaker 1: thing is I sent you over. About half of the week,
Speaker 1: Brendan can stay home at the farm, that is, wearing
Speaker 1: his usual T shirt, muck boots and a bandana on
Speaker 1: his head. But on other days he puts on a
Speaker 1: dress shirt and takes a commuter train into Manhattan. When
Speaker 1: he and Caitlin decided to move ninety miles away and
Speaker 1: start a farm, he'd already been working for the company
Speaker 1: for a few years. His boss was amenable to the arrangement,
Speaker 1: and for now, Brennan says, the four hour commute is
Speaker 1: worth it for the healthcare and retirement benefits. Well, there's
Speaker 1: certainly a very long term goal of having this be
Speaker 1: our life. UM, this being the cheese and the goats.
Speaker 1: That's long term, but in the foreseeable future. The reason
Speaker 1: for having the outside job, the reason that at this
Speaker 1: point it is a necessity, is because all of those
Speaker 1: things that we take for granted in life, such as
Speaker 1: health benefits and like the ability to retire, is very
Speaker 1: hard to do UM with a farm. The cost of
Speaker 1: entry into this business is very high. In the margins
Speaker 1: are not particularly high. If you have an outside job,
Speaker 1: you can help fund this operation, and you could also
Speaker 1: continue paying for those things that you know, those what ifs.
Speaker 1: You know, what if something happens, What if I, you know,
Speaker 1: fall down and break my leg and I can't do
Speaker 1: any of this. I still have disability benefits, I still
Speaker 1: have you know, I still have a job that I
Speaker 1: can go to. UM. So to the extent that we
Speaker 1: can keep at least one off the farm job for
Speaker 1: the time being is imperative UM. It's essential. Long term.
Speaker 1: We hope that eventually the business turns to a point
Speaker 1: where it's profitable enough that we can that we can
Speaker 1: start paying ourselves a reasonable salary with health benefits and
Speaker 1: with retirement allowances or benefits. And I ra where four
Speaker 1: one k. That's the goal. It's just in the next
Speaker 1: few years that's it's difficult. So essentially he's there working
Speaker 1: nearly all the time. Brendan had gotten up at three
Speaker 1: thirty in the morning to check on a batch of cheese.
Speaker 1: It wasn't ready, so we came back at five. The
Speaker 1: couple had to do chores then anyway, and today, between
Speaker 1: calls to clients from the room that holds medicines and
Speaker 1: cleaning supplies and a white board that keeps track of
Speaker 1: the pregnant dose, we've got Chloe Bell, Lilac Chobani. Brendan
Speaker 1: makes cheese in a room nearby, in a big stainless
Speaker 1: steel vat with dials and charts that look like something
Speaker 1: out of an old black and white movie featuring a
Speaker 1: mad scientist. I just turned the heat off thy nine degrees. Today,
Speaker 1: Brendan's making a cow's milk cheese for a local dairy farm.
Speaker 1: She's their only client, but Hoofprint hopes to make making
Speaker 1: cheese for others of their business. Now they sell raw
Speaker 1: goat's milk, goat yogurt, and four of their own cheeses,
Speaker 1: all sold out for the year, except for a few
Speaker 1: precious vacuum pacts. I love. It's a pale yellow, hard
Speaker 1: cheese that hits your taste buds immediately, but like a
Speaker 1: fine wine has a long finish. This is and at
Speaker 1: thirty dollars a pound, it's not cheaper. We're not trying
Speaker 1: to be some exclusive of cheese manufacturer here. We're not.
Speaker 1: It's not. But I think that part of what we're
Speaker 1: doing here is not just making cheese. Um. Part of
Speaker 1: what we're doing is is providing a farm experience. And
Speaker 1: those are things that you don't get off of the
Speaker 1: store shelf. Those are things that have value to people,
Speaker 1: perhaps no one more than Diane Caitlin's mother. I hated
Speaker 1: them living in the city. I worried every day and
Speaker 1: I knew they weren't happy, and I was just thrilled.
Speaker 1: When you you decide on a job and you want
Speaker 1: to make a certain amount of money, you want to
Speaker 1: make that money because you want to have a certain lifestyle.
Speaker 1: But the way they were going, they weren't living the
Speaker 1: lifestyle they wanted. So they this way, they're living the
Speaker 1: lifestyle they wanted, and that's priceless. Though Brendan acknowledges there's
Speaker 1: a social downside all he's smelling like barn. It's not
Speaker 1: necessarily like a cow. It's not like it's just barn.
Speaker 1: Brennan Foley. He and his wife Caitlin run Hoofprint Cheese
Speaker 1: Company in Millbrook, New York. That was independent producer Karen
Speaker 1: Michelle presenting Forget the big City. It's the country life
Speaker 1: for me. And that's all for this edition of On
Speaker 1: the Job from Express Employment Professionals. Find out more at
Speaker 1: Express pros dot com and you can listen to every
Speaker 1: podcast this season at Express pros dot com slash podcast.
Speaker 1: This podcast is produced by your host, Steve Mencher for
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Speaker 1: the Job. But I could attended the DA